The Fun of Game Design

[Daniel Solis]

In response to the What are your goals as a game designer? thread, I'd like to ask slightly different questions.

It is often said among big-time movie production crews that the fun had on the set is no indication that a movie will be as fun to watch. On the other hand, if the cast and crew were miserable throughout the entire production, the movie itself may end up winning audience-praise and a boat load of awards.

So, what is it about the process of game design that you find most enjoyable? Note that this is not asking your goal as a game designer, because that might actually be very different than what actually motivates you to keep at it for the long haul. What is it about game design that is just plain fun?

As a follow-up, can the fun experienced designing a game be translated for the people running/playing the game? Certainly, the group can recognize the mood inherent in the writing style, system, and overall color of the game and attempt to emulate that in-play, but is that an accurate translation? Does it even matter?

I find a lot of things fun about game design. I find it hard to keep at one creative task in my spare time for longer than a month without taking a break. Game design is very forgiving in that respect. If I get tired of writing up the setting for a game, I can tinker with the task resolution. If I get tired of that, I can work on character creation. Hell, if I get tired of all of that, I can work on the actual design of the document itself. Despite the shifted attention, it's all working towards the completion of the game. I enjoy that immensely.

Of course, that satisfaction is not exactly something that can be translated into the game itself. At least, not easily. I personally don't think it's that important anyway since, as I said in the "goals" thread, I'm not looking for widespread commercial viability or a wide target audience. I suppose my short attention span is reflected in my games' tendency to focus on -- perhaps even assumption of -- short-campaign play.

How about you?

[Lxndr]

I don't think much of game design's joy can be translated into gameplay's joy - more because the standard of "Design vs. Use" is always different, in or out of roleplaying games.  The guy who enjoys designing my motorcycle is experiencng a different joy than my riding it (even if part of his joy is the anticipation of my joy).  Y'know?

What is fun about it?  I love tinkering with game mechanics - it started with extant games, and it's just continued.  Finding new uses for old rules, changing rules, adding rules, subtracting rules; it's a joy that's unrelated to how incoherent a game may or may not be in the GNS sense.  From there it was a quick jump to creating my own ruleset, though it took hanging around here to turn that dream into reality.  That doesn't quite answer the question, but it starts to - I really just enjoy working with numbers and constructs, and manipulating them.

Settings are mostly the same way.  I love asking "what if" questions about settings, and extrapolating them (my ongoing Nobilis: Martian Frontier project being one of the big ones).  I also love writing in general, but I'm rather weak at moment-to-moment characterization, so designing settings is pretty much my ideal position - I can paint in broad strokes.  And for whatever reason, my brain spits out setting idea tidbits more often than I can bother to remember them - not that most of them are all that good, but SOME of them are, and that's what matters.

Okay, I've rambled enough.  Next!

[M. J. Young]

Well, this will be different for everyone, but for me I think it's solving problems. I don't like solving problems that have exactly one solution; game design gives me the opportunity to approach problems that might not have an obvious or unique solution, and keep at it until I've accomplished a solution.

Is that gamist?

In settings it's something of the same idea--finding ways to make settings work for game play by solving the problems.

In both cases, there's also the exploratory surprise of discovering that where you went was not where you thought you were going when you began, although that's true of most creative endeavor, I think.

--M. J. Young

[ethan_greer]

For me, it's all about the writing.  Mechanics flow smoothly - I think about what play effects I want the mechanics to have and then the dice and stuff seem to fall into place without too much effort.  Same with setting and color - I brainstorm, almost daydream, and keep the stuff that clicks.

But then, the delicious challenge of writing prose that informs the reader how to play interestingly and concisely, while at the same time bringing the setting and color across effectively - that's where it's at for me.

[Palaskar]

For me, it's coming up with weird settings and getting them down on paper/html and out of my head. I come up with settings way too fast to ever write about all of them, so I try to make RPG settings instead.

I love just free-associating wierd combinations: Transformers-->Trans Farmers, Black Ops--> Plaid Ops, etc.

[jdagna]

As far as I'm concerned, game design is about as much fun as giving birth.  (not that I have first-hand experience of the latter)  In both cases it's the end result that's fun/desirable, not the process, which is exhausting, painful and most decidedly NOT fun.

If there's any part of the process I enjoy at the time, it's definitely the layout, which isn't really game design.